This week I learned that Excel influencers are a thing on TikTok.

It’s possible all the youths know this but as I am brutally, cripplingly old and don’t have TikTok it was news to me that there’s a whole category of influencers who give Excel tips. I was clued in to this by a very good profile of Kat Norton, aka Miss Excel, who makes six figures per month off this and once made six figures in one day.

@miss.excel What happens when you watch too many Miss Excel videos 🤣🔥 #stemtok #excel ♬ I Want It That Way – Backstreet Boys

Regular readers of this column may remember that in my boring, non-music-related life I’m a data journalist, which means I spend more time with Excel than I spend with my family. The tips Norton dances along to are really very good, but I also know those tips! And I’ve never once made six figures in a day! Or year!

It will, of course, be challenging for me to be an Excel influencer as I am the exact opposite of Miss Excel. Miss Excel is a very smart, very charismatic woman who makes spreadsheet tips interesting with dance, whereas I’m not smart, not charismatic, not a woman, don’t make anything interesting, and I couldn’t dance if an Old West cowboy was shooting at my feet.

All that said, that’s a lot of money. So when I become a TikTok Excel influencer this is what I’ll dance to while telling you how to use XLOOKUP.

Kate Bush — “Pi”

This is, arguably, the best song ever written about the number pi. I’m also going to go out on a limb and say, at nearly 100 digits, it includes the most accurate rounding of pi in music history.

What does pi have to do with Excel? Well, Excel is pretty much math. You can track words in it too, of course, but in essence it’s the simplest tool for data analysis, and that’s just applied math. People think math is memorizing times tables, but that’s just because the United States is awful at teaching it. That’s just arithmetic. Math is using logic to solve problems, find patterns, predict the future, all sorts of fun stuff.

Look, I told you I’m not as interesting as Miss Excel.

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They Might Be Giants — “The Secret Life of Six”

OK, maybe I got too advanced on you too fast. Let’s back the math up a little.

They Might Be Giants is primarily known for “Birdhouse in Your Soul” or their cover of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” or, well, pretty much all of Flood, which is one of the best albums of all time. A certain generation knows them from the “Malcolm in the Middle” theme song. But what you may not have known is that they’ve released five kids’ albums, three of which are explicitly educational.

This song is from “Here Comes the 123s,” which may be a better starting point.

Weird Al Yankovic — “White & Nerdy”

So now I’m told I backed it up too far and adults already know that if you turn 6 upside down, it looks like 9. I’m additionally told that when you imply that they don’t, they find it patronizing, verging on offensive. That is just confusing, if we’re being honest.

I think the secret is to stick to the captions for the education and use the music to make math cool. For that I defer to Weird Al, universally recognized as one of the five coolest human beings in history, joining the likes of LeVar Burton, Bill Nye, The Fonz and Helen Thomas. It helps that he’s also one of the greatest musicians of the last 40 years, which is a hill I will continue to die on.

You have to give the kids what they want.

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Kraftwerk — “Pocket Calculator”

Oh come on! Now I’m being told that the youths don’t recognize Weird Al as one of the coolest people in history!

Honestly, I just feel sad for you people.

Fine, let’s just stop with the themes and pick something on topic but also danceable. I’m gonna have to bust a move while teaching people pivot tables anyway, right? So let’s go with whatever the kids are dancing to these days, which I assume is still Kraftwerk. I haven’t checked lately, but I feel like some things are just timeless.

Machine Head — “Halo”

I just… I can’t even… what is happening to the world?! Who’s responsible for all this?! I blame the parents. Someone’s not teaching their kids anything, and it’s probably you.

Deep breaths, Willis. Take deep breaths. [This is not a Gokhman note, but it should be].

Fine, I’ll just scrap this and go with what I know: I’m gonna teach you Excel while headbanging. There’s gonna be metal, and there’s gonna be me, and hair is gonna fly, and Excel knowledge is gonna be at the top of the screen. Then I just watch the cash roll in.

I’m gonna be so rich.

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.